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At the Bar in the Galliano Case, Silence

La Perle, a popular brasserie and bar in the Marais.Credit
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

PARIS

Nobody here was talking about it. Nobody would even talk about not talking about it. So radioactive was the atmosphere Tuesday at La Perle, the bar and bistro in the Marais where John Galliano allegedly uttered the remarks that cost him his job as design director at Christian Dior, that the staff refused even to entertain a reporter’s queries.

Was it the designer’s ugly-handbag crack on Thursday that occasioned the sudden institution of omertà in a bar that has a reputation as an easy neighborhood spot, one of the few in this early-closing city that stays open until 2 a.m. for the after-party set? Or was it the woozy Hitler rant the designer spouted in a separate incident that was captured on video, the one that, like plutonium, will have a half-life of 80,000,000 years?

“It’s quite sad,” said Michel Gaubert, the D.J. and music designer. Mr. Gaubert stood smoking a Marlboro outside La Perle just minutes after leaving a nearby fashion show by Anthony Vaccarello, a promising young designer who had just had his finale upstaged by the breaking news of Mr. Galliano’s firing.

Mr. Gaubert was referring to both the bigotry of Mr. Galliano’s remarks and the fact that, unlike other celebrity missteps that can be remedied with a well-crafted mea culpa and a stint in rehab, this one would likely put an end to the career of a brilliant talent, one who had become a landmark on the map of Paris fashion, and in a sense on the city itself.

Photo

The interior of La Perle.Credit
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

La Perle was Mr. Galliano’s local bar. The flamboyant designer, who is given to hair weaves, extreme bodybuilding regimens and curious headgear, lives inside a walled compound within walking distance of the bar in the Marais, a district historically home to Paris’s Jewish and, more recently, gay populations. From its 17 sidewalk tables situated on a busy corner, La Perle has good sight lines of the stylish types who wander around late at night engaging in a little lèche-vitrine (window shopping or, literally, “window licking”) at stores like Surface to Air, and equally of the traffic to and from the nearby gay bars and the cruising spot in a neighborhood park.

People in this part of the city, a kind of Parisian version of the East Village, are no strangers to the unsavory: gay bashings, a recent stabbing and automobile break-ins. But it is rare for someone as famous as Mr. Galliano to commit a public act as inexcusable as the one that cost him his job at the pinnacle of fashion. “Everyone in France grew up” in the shadow of intolerance, Mr. Gaubert added. Even a cursory excursion along the byways of the French Internet, he added, makes clear that virulent views like those expressed by the designer are not rare. But the public expression of intolerance is unusual and particularly troubling, patrons of La Perle said.

“You can think what you will,” said a man tucking into a salmon plate Tuesday afternoon, declining to provide his name for publication. “But France is still a civil society and these things are never spoken, it’s understood.”

Few patrons were braving the nippy late winter air to sit at outdoor tables at La Perle on Tuesday, and those who were wanted little to do with Mr. Galliano and ugly epithets and his pathetic tale.

“It’s terrible what he said, but it’s not coming out of the blue,” said Olivier Robert, a rock musician who doubles as a chauffeur during Fashion Week. Mr. Robert was parked cater-corner to La Perle waiting for a client to emerge from the Anthony Vaccarello show, a fine presentation whose fate it was to be forgotten instantly, overtaken by the latest bit of unfortunate news.